Hajime Tabata Talks About The Success Of Final Fantasy 15 And More

Final Fantasy 15 is now out and the game’s director, Hajime Tabata, can now relax and reflect on the success of the game so far. It’s been a long road to finally finish the game.

Japanese website, ItMedia, had a chance to speak with Tabata as he talks about the game’s current success and more. The game was a huge success in the West, although what about the numbers over in Japan?

Tabata said that the majority of sales were mostly from overseas. He said that this is to be expected as more people own a PS4 and Xbox One console outside of Japan.

In Japan, sales of Final Fantasy 15 are just over 800,000 units which is kind of low for a mainstream FF video game. To put this into perspective, Final Fantasy XIII sold over 1.5 million units in its first week in Japan.

Despite the numbers, Tabata said the numbers are still good because of the current situation of the gaming market in Japan. If you don’t know, Japanese gamers have migrated over to mobile gaming for some reason. PS4 ownership is not as high as the previous PS3 generation.

As for the game’s launch, he felt it was necessary to launch the game worldwide simultaneously. In the past, Final Fantasy games would have been released in Japan months before coming out to North America and Europe.

The game is also an open world title in order to appeal to Western gamers he said. It was the right decision as people criticized the linear nature of Final Fantasy XIII. Not to mention games like GTA 5, Fallout 4 and more show that open world titles are popular right now.

He is also happy with the many ways that people are playing the game. Many players (like myself), have been enjoying playing all of the sidequests first before doing the story missions.